Walk into many stores, restaurant or workplaces nowadays, and you see the signs reading “No weapons allowed.”

But a popular local restaurant is bucking that trend by not only encouraging people to show off their guns, but offering a discount to those who do.

It’s the Friday lunch crowd at Bergeron’s with fried catfish, the top seller. Owner Kevin Cox says 500 people come through the Port Allen restaurant daily. So about two weeks ago, he started a new promotion to help some of his customers save money.

“If you have a gun on you, I’m going to give you a discount,” said Cox.

The discount is 10 percent off if you show that you’re carrying a gun into the restaurant. Cox said it’s an idea that started with welcoming police officers with their duty weapons on their side and has now branched out to include civilians.

“My friends and relatives would come in with their guns on their holster. I felt good about that. It made me feel safer that they were there with their gun so why not include all good citizens with the officers too,” said Cox.

Those citizens who are customers agree saying not only are they protected by their Second Amendment rights, but they’re also providing a service to the restaurant and all its patrons.

“I think it protects the restaurant. It discourages people from breaking in. If they think someone may have a gun and it’s concealed, you’ll think twice about coming in and robbing somebody,” said Bergeron’s customer Steve Moore.

Mike Campbell left his gun in his truck and carpooled with a buddy so no 10 percent discount for him, but, he too believes the new promotion is a plus.

“You feel safer because I mean somebody walks in and wants to rob the place, they’re going to think twice when they see it’s not a gun free place,” said Campbell.

Fried fish might be the special of the day, but the talk at Bergeron’s is about guns, and a restaurant owner hoping more law-abiding customers won’t be afraid to show them off.

Port Allen is across the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge. It’s now a place where you can both pass the boudin and the ammo. I won’t try to parse this guy’s “logic” but I know one place I won’t be eating in the unlikely event I’m in Port Allen.

The link came to me via horrid punster James Karst on Twitter and it’s given me an earworm:

“What do Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Mexico, and Nevada all have in common?” he said to me after the Dairy Breakfast. “Those are all battleground states that Barack Obama won in 2012—and they also have Republican governors. So why are state Republican leaders connecting with voters in a way that the national party isn’t?” Walker repeated his litany of self-assigned virtues: He and his fellow GOP governors were plainspoken optimists who made the rounds. “Not that any Republican is necessarily going to win the majority among women, younger voters, or ethnic minorities,” he conceded. “But we can do a lot better. I go to places where you’d never dream of seeing Mitt Romney or John McCain.”

The irony of that last statement was surely unintended: In the three breakfasts we had been to that morning, I had seen exactly as many adult African-Americans and Latinos as Confederate flags—namely, one of each. Instead, this was a key slice of Scott Walker country, populated by thousands of white male rural voters. It takes more than them to win; and Walker, whose statewide approval rating has stayed unwaveringly in the neighborhood of 49 over the past two years, has consistently managed to unite a winning coalition even while advocating divisive policies. For a national Republican Party glumly pondering its shrinking demographics, Scott Walker would seem to be offering good news: Fire up the base, pick off a healthy share of independents, and you can continue to grind out victories for years to come. Republicans didn’t necessarily have to persuade voters they were right, Walker maintained—and that had been the case, he said, going back to his very first win, for State Assembly back in 1993: “The bottom line is I was pretty committed to my ideals, and that’s why people elected me. Not necessarily because they were ideologically in line with me, but because people have become cynical about politicians, and they want somebody who actually stands for something.”

Only until all those fucking fossils die off. Then you’re screwed. So what Walker is offering the Republican party is a chance to do more of the same for about five to ten more years. Maybe that’s enough for them. Maybe that’s all they want is power TOMORROW, and not power forever.

Maybe that’s what Bush taught them, that having a Republican majority isn’t worth it to them if they have to be nice to women, gays and minorities at their parties. Maybe basic politeness, an unwillingness to actually build physical internment camps, is a bridge too far, even if it would get them more votes for more years.

Maybe they’d just rather be mean and small and angry and put-upon and have all their problems be the fault of some black people somewhere buying the wrong kind of cereal with food stamps. Maybe that’s just more fun.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft threw a core principle of Bush-era foreign policy under the bus Tuesday night, when he said that democracy is not the core American value, liberty is.

Speaking to a packed house at the first night of the inaugural In Defense of Christians summit in Washington, D.C., Ashcroft said that “I sometimes think that in the U.S. we have misplaced our core values,” particularly when it comes to foreign policy. “We seem to think democracy is the ultimate value… It’s not the ultimate value. Liberty is, the value with which God endowed us at creation.”

Yeah. All those wars we fought to bring democracy to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? Fuck ’em.

I can’t believe this fucknut was our chief law enforcement officer for, like, the actual United States.

In the last window of the last day, I attended a session by three journalists from Chicago’s public radio station WBEZ, about their two-year-old project called Curious City. The project aims to empower citizens of the Windy City — by not only offering to answer their questions, but by including the information-seekers in the reporting process and getting others in the community involved along the way. The project has uncovered real news — discovering that the city was trying to abandon a valuable firefighter-safety program, for example — but also tried to get to the bottom of weird smells or deployed a veteran cop to help find the best donuts. For 60 minutes, I heard about engaging human beings instead of tricking an algorithm.

A few hours later, my iPhone and I were on a CTA train, and my screen was white-hot, with gunfire and anger again in the streets of Ferguson, and with thousands of protesters flooding downtown Hong Kong. Just like Tony Haile had said, the news I was reading in the palm of my hand got into my soul in a way that much of what had transpired at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers did not. This is the battle of our 21st Century — the quest for a true democracy — and whether regular people are going to have power over their lives, or whether that power will keep flowing to big, algorithm-writing corporations and the 1 Percent that they enrich. Ironically, just hours after the end of ONA, I read about the rise of “corporate journalism” — wealthy firms creating their own newsrooms that will the void of shrinking newsrooms that once served the public, the ones that were represented in Chicago.

Things are not going well for Nucky Thompson. One attempt has already been made on his life and there will be more to come. He’s merely rich instead of super-rich after making “legitimate” investments in the stock market. One woman close to him exits his life while another one returns but it’s uncertain for how long. The deal with Joe Kennedy appears to be off but not before the original wolf of wall street flirts with Margaret, offers her oysters and a ride home to New York. I’m pretty sure that ride was a double entendre…

After the break we’ll move on to my weekly random, discursive and sporadically relevant comments:

ith a smile on his face, George Zimmerman spent Saturday afternoon posing for photos, sharing hugs and shaking hands with gun enthusiasts at a firearms expo in Lake Mary..

“It’s so odd to me,” said Zimmerman, about the celebrity treatment he receives in public. “[But] it is appreciated.”

In his first interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Zimmerman described life after his acquittal last year in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The former Neighborhood Watch volunteer shot the unarmed black teen in Sanford on Feb. 26, 2012.

Now life for the 30-year-old is completely different.

He’s always moving.

He’s in debt.

And he’s constantly receiving death threats.

“I just try to be smart where I go,” said Zimmerman, who described the gun show at Gander Mountain Academy as a “friendly” event that didn’t warrant extra protection.

Zimmerman said he carries a semi-automatic handgun for added safety.

“It’s part of life,” said Zimmerman, whose Twitter feed is a constant barrage of death threats. “It’s unfortunately necessary right now.”(continued)

6 posted on ‎9‎/‎21‎/‎2014‎ ‎3‎:‎18‎:‎37‎ ‎PM by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.)

To: 2ndDivisionVet

He is not a CCW hero. He was a cowboy, a rent a cop wannabe who got a big head and a puffed up chest when he strapped on his gun. Was the shoot justified? Yes. But his conduct after his exoneration indicate that he is not just a meek and mild citizen who just happened to be jumped by a bad guy.

I wonder how many Freepers under this kind of pressure (the orchestrated hate of half of black America) could keep their noses cleaner. I certainly could! Shall we start with Zimmerman’s previously scheduled boxing match with rapper DMX?Yea, that’s certainly an avenue to getting on with one’s life and maintaining a low profile, isn’t it?

since no one, including you, will hire him for any job?What a strawman argument……..but I’ll go one better, WHY DON’T YOU OFFER HIM EMPLOYMENT? Since you appear to be his guardian angel and defender on this site, the very least YOU could do is hire him………..Well?

CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker’s office, on the fifth floor of the Time Warner Center in New York, is an unexpectedly modest rectangle adjacent to the airy newsroom, with only a bank of TV screens mounted on one wall suggesting that this man runs the world’s most recognizable TV-news operation. When Zucker took over CNN in January 2013, nobody knew how he was planning to remake the network–including Bourdain, whose show was in production but hadn’t yet aired. Zucker might have killed it right then, but instead he gave it a prime Sunday-night time slot and a major marketing push. “Tony is an incredibly strong storyteller–he tells stories through food and travel and a little alcohol mixed in,” says Zucker. “Really, that’s what CNN should be about. I learned as much about Israel and the Palestinians from Tony’s hour on Jerusalem as I did from any reporting that I’ve seen.”

Then your reporting needs to be better. Too many damn reporters think repeating some buzzwords in front of a backdrop is what the news is all about. If you can take a storytelling lesson from a cooking show, great, but take that lesson and apply it elsewhere. Don’t just say hey, this is great, but let’s keep investing in letting Wolf Blitzer yell incoherencies while Republicans spew nonstop bullshit.

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) warned about the dangers of marijuana, arguing that weed is worse than cigarettes and has caused an increase in the number of homeless people moving to Colorado.

Fleming’s comments came during a speech at the Values Voter Summit on Friday.

Fleming said that the social experiment of Colorado allowing recreational pot sales has not “brought an avalanche of revenue.” Instead, Fleming said, it’s caused an increase in “the number of homeless people” moving to Colorado.

In the same speech Fleming argued that marijuana is not, in fact, harmless by saying that marijuana contains qualities that are “four times more potent than tobacco, which is known to cause” cancer.

Fleming is also one of three, count ’em three, Gret Stet House members who are doctors. They’re all throwback physicians, fewer young doctors are Republicans because of that party’s loathing of science. Why is that the House docs are some of the stupidest/craziest members of Congress?

You’re probably asking yourself what the hell is Quasi NOLA? It’s a mysterious man or woman of considerable wit who tweets about New Orleans. Quasi NOLA does not engage with the hoi polloi and remains a riddle wrapped in an enigma shrouded in mystery or something like that. It’s kind of like the King of Comus only without the pervy mask and tights. And Comus was never this amusing or clever. I think Quasi is even sober, which rules out several contenders…

On to the tweet of the week. It was actually launched on September 20 as I was suffering through the LSU-Mississippi State game. It mentioned your humble blogger and this very blog and, unlike that game, merits a Les Miles hand clap:

There are many theories as to the identity of Quasi NOLA. Quasi is clearly a native or longtime resident because he/she/it is fond of retro NOLA references. And it seems to be someone who is acquainted with the post-Federal Flood blogpocheh as Liprap called us. I have one serious candidate who spends a lot of time on the water but it’s just a guess.

I’m reasonably certain that it’s not Quasimodo. He’s never been spotted in the bell tower of St. Louis Cathedral, unless, that is, he’s taken to humping lucky dogs on Jackson Square. It’s just a hunch, which I should probably take back…

So, Quasi NOLA, I know you’d rather remain anonymous, but there are tweeter tube sleuths on the case. If you choose to reveal yourself, we will surely grant you SANCTUARY.

As you can see below, I’m a Laughton man when it comes to the Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is NOT about Notre Dame football. No, Irish; except for Maureen O’Hara, Edmond O’Brien and Thomas Mitchell. Damn, that list of distinguished players in the 1939 version blew the joke. Oh well, that never stopped me before. SANCTUARY:

I spent half my day trying to wrap my head around why the Bill Simmons situation bugged me as much as it did. Of course A and Adrastos hit on a ton of points I planned to make, so it was time to cut what I had and start over again.

Simmons started his career as an anti-establishment guy and later became part of the establishment. He ripped the shit out of incompetent GMs and coaches as well as lazy and petulant athletes from the safety of a website that about six people read. Eventually, he gained enough views to become the “it guy” of the moment: The fan with intelligence and insight enough to make good points while pairing those thoughts with the “just folks bar-guy” feel that appealed to “regular folks.”

He parlayed that break into a job at ESPN. Then, he parlayed THAT into a series of incredible projects at ESPN, including one of my favorite things ever: The 30-for-30 series. Although I’m not going to go as far as Robert Lipsyte did in calling him “ESPN’s Franchise Player,” I will say he’s a reason a lot of people go to the site and the source of great out-of-the-box ideas that keep ESPN relevant to casual fans and full-fledged fanatics alike.

That said, it’s not about him, something Simmons has never really full grasped.

After I got past the “holy shit” reaction, all I could think was “What an asshole…”

Do I think Roger Goodell is lying like hell about the Rice situation? Hell yes. Do I think people need to keep on top of this? Hell even more yes.

Do I think Charlo Greene has the right to her beliefs on cannabis and the legalization moment? You bet. Do I think she has a constitutionally protected right to get the message out on that issue? You bet your life.

However, how these people approached their topic and the way their selfishness led to more harm than good bugs me. It bugs me even more because they don’t understand that journalism ISN’T ABOUT YOU. It’s about the work. It’s about the information. It’s about the impact on the audience.

I know one of Greene’s former professors and he’s said more than once that she was “headstrong” along with other things that seemed to belie a sense that what she wanted was most important. Colleagues noted that she often pushed marijuana legalization stories when they weren’t there or bent stories to be more in favor of legalization. As much as I hate it when Fox News assholes say it, it was clear she had an agenda.

Simmons has always been about his own brand and what he could present that reflected positively on it. If it was interesting to Simmons, he figured it was interesting to everyone else. He also had no compunction about setting up his own version of “The Jordan Rules” for himself at ESPN. He viewed it as keeping his street cred, while others saw it as a petulant star pushing for what he wanted, fuck everyone else.

Even in a completely free press state (forget for a moment about KTVA and ESPN being private companies for a minute), we have time, place and manner restrictions. The manner in which both of these people did what they did was inexcusable, and not just because of the language. They left behind a wake of colleagues who had to scramble to figure out what the hell just happened and what the hell was going to happen next. Of all the people I feel bad for, the one I most pity is the anchor on KTVA who looked like someone had just walked onto the set and shit on her desk. How the hell do you recover from Greene’s blaze-of-glory exit?

Context counts for Simmons as well and not just because of Goodell’s position or the way-too-chummy connection ESPN has to the NFL. Simmons isn’t the punk on a barstool anymore. He made a choice to associate with a company that while looser than MSNBC or CNN, lacks the total free reign insanity associated with being an independent blogger. I can’t think of any company out there where you could get away with calling someone a fucking liar and calling him fucking bullshit and then challenging your boss to do something about you. Even if you can do more things at Company A as opposed to Company B, there are rules. When Johnny Damon went from the Red Sox to the Yankees, he got the memo early: That long hair and beard shit was fine in Beantown, but here we shave and look professional. You don’t like it? Don’t sign the contract.

Also think of the context of distribution: I can call my best friend a cocksucker while we’re drinking at a bar and probably get away with it. If called my boss a cocksucker on this blog post and then wrote, “I bet you won’t fucking fire me you fucking pussy,” I’m getting fucking fired. It’s one thing to be over the top in front of a couple people when your hammered. It’s another to broadcast to the world, “You can’t fucking stop me. You can’t even hope to fucking CONTAIN ME!”

In the wake of these things, Greene and Simmons are getting a ton of press. The “free Simmons” movement has been dimming the sun with all the power Twitter is pulling to keep up with it. Greene has been on YouTube more often than clips of John Oliver, doing everything from explaining why she quit to sparking up in front of a reporter to showcase her commitment to the cause.

What’s sad is that the underlying issues that are front and center now are getting lost in the long shadow cast by people like these who believe themselves to be bigger than big.

Roger Goodell is the sports world’s villain du jour, but until the NFL’s elevator of investigation reaches the top — or ESPN delivers a smoking gun that proves the NFL viewed the Ray Rice video tape — the commissioner is not a certified liar.

And Bill Simmons has no license to call him one without more justification than “I’m just saying it.”

See, this is the same milquetoast Little Debbie horseshit that leads journalism to separate “fact-checking” from reporting, so that journalists won’t have to do uncomfortable, mean things like use direct language that people understand.

It’s just avoidance. That’s all it is. There are apparent falsehoods and incorrect statements and “pants on fire” ratings and numbers of Pinocchio noses and it’s all so that nobody has to use the word LIED. Goodell LIED.

But he’s not a “certified liar?” Certified by whom? The Bureau of Liars? The Commission on Not Telling the Truth, which gives journalists some kind of coupon they can redeem to feel more secure about saying lies are lies?

At what point do we just stop the couching, the worrying, the ooh you can’t say that-ing, and just fucking say things?

One of my favorite things about Slate is the weekly Ken Jennings news trivia quiz. I usually do quite well and, on occasion, can be as good a guesser as Ken. I often learn news of the weird type things while taking the quiz. That’s how I heard about this tasteless, tacky, and other T words promo campaign from a tour company in the Big D:

A Dallas tour company drew criticism after an image of one of its buses featuring a controversial design floated around on social media.

Dallas City Tours’ design consisted of a photo of former president John F. Kennedy with the line “Big Things Happen Here,” which critics said was an inappropriate reference to Kennedy’s 1963 assassination in Dallas, according to WFAA News 8, a Dallas news agency. Critics also found the placement of the metal door handle—in the middle of JFK’s forehead—offensive.

The tour bus conducts four tours each day, and makes several stops along city landmarks, many related to JFK’s assassination. Some viewers found this to be an acceptable explanation of why the former president’s image would appear on the bus.

The owner of Dallas City Tours told WFAA News 8 that the slogan was intended to be on the other side of the bus, as it was in the original design he sent to graphic artists, and that he regrets how the design turned out. The owner said he will cover up the current design while a new one is prepared.

Offensive? Yes. Tacky? Yes. But more importantly, this is dumb and exploitative. I understand that people make a Big D deal about seeing Dealy Plaza, but JFK’s murder is one of the most searing tragedies in our history. This company seems to treat it as akin to a ghost tour or something.

I get tourism. Tourism is the life’s blood of the New Orleans economy. It shouldn’t be, but that’s an argument for another day. There are all sorts of tours cashing in on some of the grizzlier and more tragic aspects of our history. But pairing an image of President Kennedy with the slogan “big things happen here” makes the NOLA misery bus tours of the Lower Ninth Ward look tasteful in comparison. The placement of the door handle makes it worse but it’s not the only problem.

If this was a stunt to get attention, it worked. But it also proves while that T is for Texas it can also stand for tawdry and tacky. Here’s a picture of the not so magic bus via Frontburner D Magazine:

I like Bill Simmons. I like his writing. I like Grantland. He’s a funny dude. But his suspension by ESPN doesn’t have me storming the Bastille or climbing the ramparts. The twitterati are assembling with their version of torches and pitchforks, a hashtag: #FreeBillSimmons.

I agree that ESPN is hypocritical for putting their very own bro into the deep freeze for 3 weeks for saying the same shit that others on the network have said about Roger Goodell. Keith Olbermann and Bob Ley, come on down. I agree that Roger Goodell is lying like a rug and should be ousted, BUT even a bro should know that if you dare your bosses to come after you, they will. Here’s a transcript of what Simbro said:

I just think not enough is being made out of the fact that they knew about the tape, and they knew what was on it. Goodell, if he didn’t know what was on that tape, he’s a liar. I’m just saying it. He is lying. I think that dude is lying, if you put him up on a lie detector test that guy would fail. And for all these people to pretend they didn’t know is such fucking bullshit. It really is—it’s such fucking bullshit. And for him to go in that press conference and pretend otherwise, I was so insulted.

Here’s the really brotastic part wherein Simmons like threw down the gauntlet, dude:

I really hope somebody calls me or emails me and says I’m in trouble for anything I say about Roger Goodell. Because if one person says that to me, I’m going public. You leave me alone. The commissioner’s a liar and I get to talk about that on my podcast. Thank you. … Please call me and say I’m in trouble. I dare you.

This is a classic case of a highly-paid employee acting like they own the company. Wrong. Simmons has gotten his own way since joining ESPN and he obviously made some enemies along the line. They pounced on this challenge and he was suspended. Was it fair? Hell, no. It’s called real life.

It wasn’t the language Simbro used that led to his brospension, it was the challenge to the suits. Notice, however, that he was suspended, not fired, and that he will be back in time for the NBA season. Hoops are Bill’s speciality. The suits may be mad at Bill for calling their sad faced little friend a liar but they’re not stupid, they need him on the job during basketball season. After all, he talks less trash than Charles Barkely and has better hair. Actually, he *has* hair and Chuck does not.

The post title was inspired by a brilliant, and hilariously funny, piece by Jeb Lund in the Guardian. I hereby declare this the headline of the week:

ESPN created a bro-monster. Of course the NFL-pocalypse turned Bill Simmons against them

Lund’s piece is *almost* as funny as Simmons’ two-parter about the 2013 NBA offseason wherein he riffed on the 1988 movie classic Midnight Run. As someone who specializes in weaving unrelated materials and jokes into a whole, I tip my hat to Billbro. Maybe I shouldn’t call him that. It conjures up images of the ultra-racist, rabble rousing, segregationist Senator and Mississippi Governor Theodore Bilbo. He was no Charles Grodin…

Since I’m an inveterate punster with the Hollies on my mind, I’ll give them the last word:

Why do websites of otherwise trustworthy news organizations stoop to such lows? Because journalism’s digital business model, which forces outlets to compete for the same ad space with the most irresponsible websites on the internet, has created a new reality. Journalists, without the time or wherewithal to carry out a bare minimum of investigation under an unprecedentedly short news cycle, are forced to chase viral clicks and the pennies they bring, posting stories engineered toward “virality” to court their new social-media kingmakers. Once, credibility was the linchpin of journalism. Today, as dubiously sourced stories multiply, it’s an afterthought.

Wow.

All this stuff happens all by itself!

Journalism’s “digital business model,” which is not a thing I knew to exist, has created a new reality! No people were involved in creating this new reality, nor were any decisions made. The business model created the reality. And journalists, apparently by magic, were forced to chase “viral clicks” and the “pennies they bring.”

Who forces those journalists? It’s not clear. Could be imaginary ninjas. Those things are fucking everywhere.

Republican candidates are forever trying to prove they’re real people and that Democrats are “not one of us” and, even worse, second generation politicians. Cory Gardner in Colorado is the latest with this deceptively pleasant attack on Senator Mark Udall:

Notice that Gardner’s father is a tractor dealer. He’s clearly not a prole. The ad is an effective one. It’s real point is not that Mark Udall is a nice guy, but that he’s a CAREER POLITICIAN. Run in terror. In the pre-Wallace/Carter/Reagan days, we called people like the Udalls PUBLIC SERVANTS. Mr. Udall was not amused:

“This race should be about who can better represent the great state of Colorado, not personal attacks on our families,” Udall said in a statement. “So, to see Congressman Gardner decide to go after my late father and members of my family in a negative ad. That’s just low.”

Those of us who are old enough to remember Mo Udall’s gallant campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1976 agree with his son. He was a snake bit candidate who kept finishing second in primaries to Jimmy Carter. By the time Carter did his typical end of campaign fade, Udall had run out of money and dropped out of the race. Mo was the candidate of the party’s liberal wing as well as one of the nicest and funniest people to ever run for President.

I have learned the difference between a cactus and a caucus. On a cactus, the pricks are on the outside.

Very salty for a Mormon but Mo Udall wore his religion lightly. I can’t blame Mark Udall for sniping at his opponent. On the other hand, reminding Democrats that Mark is Mo’s boy is not the worst thing in the world.